Professor M S Swaminathan
has been acclaimed by the TIME magazine as one of the twenty most
influential Asians of the 20th century and one of the only three from
India, the other two being Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. He
has been described by the United Nations Environment Programme as “the
Father of Economic Ecology” because of his leadership of the ever-green
revolution movement in agriculture and by Javier Perez de Cuellar,
Secretary General of the United Nations, as “a living legend who will go
into the annals of history as a world scientist of rare distinction”. He
was Chairman of the UN Science Advisory Committee set up in 1980 to take
follow-up action on the Vienna Plan of Action. He has also served as
Independent Chairman of the FAO Council (1981-85) and President of the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources
(1984-90). He was President of the World Wild Fund for Nature (India)
from 1989-96. He also served as President of the Pugwash Conferences on
Science and World Affairs (2002-07), President of the National Academy
of Agricultural Sciences (1991-96 and 2005-07) and Chairman, National
Commission on Farmers (2004-06).

He served as Director of
the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (1961-72), Director General
of Indian Council of Agricultural Research and Secretary to the
Government of India, Department of Agricultural Research and Education
(1972-79), Principal Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture (1979-80),
Acting Deputy Chairman and later Member (Science and Agriculture),
Planning Commission (1980-82) and Director General, International Rice
Research Institute, the Philippines (1982-88).

A plant geneticist by
training, Professor Swaminathan’s contributions to the agricultural
renaissance of India have led to his being widely referred to as the
scientific leader of the green revolution movement His advocacy of
sustainable agriculture leading to an ever-green revolution makes him an
acknowledged world leader in the field of sustainable food security. The
International Association of Women and Development conferred on him the
first international award for significant contributions to promoting the
knowledge, skill and technological empowerment of women in agriculture
and for his pioneering role in mainstreaming gender considerations in
agriculture and rural development. Professor Swaminathan was awarded the
Ramon Magsasay Award for Community Leadership in 1971, the Albert
Einstein World Science Award in 1986, the first World Food Prize in
1987, and Volvo and Tyler Prize for Environment, the Indira Gandhi Prize
for Peace, Disarmament and Development in 2000 and the Franklin D
Roosevelt Four Freedoms Medal, the Mahatma Gandhi Prize of UNESCO in
2000 and the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award (2007).

Professor Swaminathan is a
Fellow of many of the leading scientific academics of India and the
world, including the Royal Society of London and the U.S. National
Academy of Sciences. He has received 56 honorary doctorate degrees from
universities around the world. He currently holds the UNESCO Chair in
Eco-technology at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai
(Madras), India. He is a Member of the Parliament of India (Rajya Sabha),
to which position he was nominated by the Government of India in May
2007 in recognition of his contributions in the field of agricultural
research and development.